Well, that’s not exactly true. There were a whole theater of people who shared this distinction with me. It was surprisingly full actually.

After a long day of geocaching, we stopped to grab dinner when we decided to see what movies were playing across the street. Low and behold, Return of the King was playing in half an hour. We quickly grabbed some grub and headed in.

It was a very good movie with battle scenes that more impressive than any others I can remember. The special effects were seamless with the live action.

It was quite long though and I wish some of the “character building” scenes were a little shorter. Yes, he’s dead. Get over it.

If there’s ever a drinking game based on the Lord of the Rings movies, you should have to take a drink every time Frodo appears to be dead or Sam starts to cry. You’d probably have alcohol poisoning by the time the three movies ended.

I was glad to see that Sam has gotten over his athsma since the days when he was a Goonie.

I wonder if Elijah Wood had a personal trainer to prepare for these movies. Not for his physique, but for his eyebrows. He spent most of the movie with his eyebrows pointed up in the middle, looking bemused at just about everything he came across.

The scene in the pub after they return to the shire could have been straight out of Budweiser commercial. “What do you do after you’ve saved the four lands? Enjoy a cold, refreshing Budweiser with three of your short friends.”

Having never read the books, it was a great story to discover even if the ending was a bit cliche. They literally sailed off into the sunset. Then again, maybe that wasn’t cliche yet when Tolkien wrote it.

We’re still only about halfway through the Fellowship of the Ring audio CD set we got for Christmas last year, but I’m looking forward to hearing the full story of all three books and all the details that come with it.

Long live the King!